Make A Frisbee Golf Course

Here is a great idea for free spring/summer entertainment for you and all of your friends! Best of all, its free!

My best buddy Jerry has been playing frisbee golf for a couple of years now and he’s always telling me what a great game it is. I finally joined him one day right near the end of the season last year and I have to admit, it was really fun!  It’s just like real golf except instead of whacking a ball around you use frisbees instead.  The only problem is that the only course that was already set up is quite far from where we live and it was nearly an hour bike ride away.  So I spent all winter thinking about how to set up a course closer to home and this is what I came up with.

All you really need to play is a frisbee, an open field or a park and a target for each “hole” you want on your course.  The one at the park where we played last year has 18 holes just like a real golf course and takes around 2 hours to play a round if you take your time.  I got to thinking that we really didn’t need all 18 holes anyways because we could just play the same holes over and over and just keep looping around until we hit 18.  So I decided to check out our school yard which is only a couple of blocks away and see if there was a way we could use that.  As it turns out there are 3 garbage cans spaced out around the field that work quite well as the hole targets so I drew up a plan on how we could use the garbage cans where they are sitting and just keep circling around and around but I’m sure that any field would work. Targets are supposed to be about 4 feet high, so if you are using a tree or light standard for a target, you should tie a ribbon around it  at the right height so only the shots that hit below it count.

Here’s how it goes:  Each hole has a par number that is decided by how many obstacles (trees, hills etc.) or how far the target is from the “tee-off” point (where you start the hole). You may have to do some trial throws to figure out a tee off spot and what par the target should be set at. It’s usually 3 to 5 shots that you are allowed to hit the target.  So if you play a hole with a par 5 and you hit the target in 4 shots, you have a score of -1.  If you hit it in 5 you have a score of 0 and if you hit it in 6 shots, you have a +1.  Of course the idea is to have a score as close to 0 as possible and a negative score is even better because it means you are hitting your target in less then the average amount of throws.  Since we are playing with garbage cans instead of real targets, all you have to do is hit the can because it’s too hard to get it right in. There are 3 garbage cans in our school yard, so we go around 6 times and that gives us the 18 holes we need to play a full game!

Even if you don’t have real frisbees, you can always use the lids from ice cream buckets, or even plastic picnic plates work really well. (But don’t use real plates or you could kill somebody!)